Biblioteca della Toscana Pietro Leopoldo

Very nice and helpful staff.

who writes on the site that the structure is open and then at the entrance tells you that it is closed until next week (obviously without updating the site) does not deserve even a star

(from publication of the Tuscany Region): The palace is linked to the name of the ancient Cerretani family, attested in Florence starting from the twelfth century. It is a complex of aggregated buildings, which extends between the north side of piazza dell’Unità Italiana, the east side of piazza della Stazione and via Nazionale. In Roman Florence in this extra-moenia area there is a villa, a building that is partly residential and partly intended for production activities. During the Middle Ages, the area was subject to transformations conditioned by the monastic settlements of Santa Maria tra le Vigne (later Santa Maria Novella) and the monastery of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini. At the end of the 13th century, with the expansion of the city walls, buildings belonging to merchant families, professionals and craftsmen were built around the square. In the sixteenth century, a branch of the Cerretani family, having acquired a significant wealth and political role, settled in the area and started a strategy of progressive real estate acquisitions, with the aim of reconstituting a prestigious family home. In the mid-seventeenth century work began to unify the distinct and ancient buildings in a single building. Giovanni di Niccolò Cerretani, who became a senator in 1663, was responsible for the most important architectural transformations. In particular, the large hall on the first floor (Sala dei convivi) has been preserved, whose sumptuous quadrature painted decoration, attributed to Jacopo Chiavistelli, represents a rare example of seventeenth-century decoration in a Florentine stately home. After a devastating fire that destroyed part of the palace in 1714, a general overhaul of the residence was carried out, which was also equipped with monumental stairs and a gallery decorated with stuccoes, mirrors and niches. Famous artists are involved, such as the painters Matteo Bonechi and Vincenzo Meucci. Of the former, a ceiling decorated with the Judgment of Paris is visible; to the second we owe, in the gallery, the fresco depicting the meeting between the emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Pope Alexander III, of the Sienese Cerretani Bandinelli family. The last representative of the Cerretani family, the Marquise Maria Cassandra, left the Gondi relatives universal heirs in 1802, with the task of perpetuating the name and fate of the family. From the mid-nineteenth century the events of the building were closely intertwined with the urban transformations of the area. In 1857 the building was sold by the Cerretani Gondi to the Russian countess Bobrinskoy, and in 1862 it was acquired by the Società Anonima delle Strade Ferrate, to be used as offices. With the construction of the new station of Santa Maria Novella (1931-1935) the western part of the building was demolished and the restoration of the facade began, leading to a partially different front. The portion on Via Valfonda is rebuilt, giving it the characters of the rationalist architecture it still has today. The complex was purchased by the Tuscany Region in 2004. Recently, the ground floor rooms overlooking Piazza dell'Unità have been restored to house the Pietro Leopoldo Tuscan Library